Then Everything Changed (On Hiatus)
by Inkraven003
Summary: Too many underestimate the love between a mother and her child, underestimate the power and unforgiving wrath of a mother who goes to protect her child. The man with the scar made a mistake. His mistake was leaving Josephine alive because now . . . . now he has a mother who will let nothing stand between her and getting back her child. (F!SoleSurvivor)


I could hear alarms, sirens. What was going on? It was like I was waking up from a deep, deep sleep. When had I gone to sleep? The last thing I remembered was going into the decontamination chamber. Strangely, I was having a hard time opening my eyes and I was so . . . cold. Why was I so cold? Now I heard voices, but they weren't . . . coherent, not clear. Muffled, at best. There was a deep voice, imposing and commanding. The other was higher pitched. A man and a woman? Slowly, slowly I opened my eyes and it took a moment for the dark to recede and for my vision to clarify. Across from me, I saw Nathaniel holding Shaun, looking as confused and disoriented as I felt. I tried to lift my arm, but it was like lifting lead weights. What was wrong with me?

And where were all the Vault workers who had been here just moments ago? Movement caught my eye and I watched as people came between Nathaniel and my chamber. They were odd looking, nothing like the people who had helped us before. One wore a hazmat suit, the other, a strange getup of leather and belts and . . . was that a gun? My heart started beating wildly. Nathaniel's chamber opened. The woman in the hazmat suit stepped forward and . . . was she trying to take Shaun? Nathaniel wasn't letting go.

I watched in a stupor as the man in leather raised his gun and pointed it at Nathaniel, telling him to let go of Shaun. But Nathaniel glared at him, glancing at me, flat out refusing to let go of our baby. And then I watched in horror as Nathaniel's head exploded. I opened my mouth, but no sound came out. The woman tore Shaun from Nathaniel's death grip. Fury and grief grabbed me, turning my once useless limbs back into my control. I pounded on my door, screaming.

The man came up to my door his face impassive. But I memorized it, burned his image into my brain. This man killed my husband, my best friend. In cold blood and he felt nothing for it. He said something, but I was so focused on his face, so enraged, I didn't hear it. And then he and that damnable woman started walking away and all I was left with was the view of my dead husband as the door to his hatch started to close. Blood everywhere. Oh God, there was so much blood. My fury left me and I cried out in agony but I couldn't tear my eyes away. I couldn't—

Again, I woke, and for a moment, I shuddered at the nightmare I had just had. Why would my brain ever . . . but with a sinking feeling, this felt familiar. My limbs were so heavy and I was so cold. I was having trouble stringing together coherent thoughts, of opening my eyes.

I almost didn't open them but I had to know. When my vision came back, I was greeted with my nightmare. Nathaniel. Dead. His blood, now dried, cracked, and rusty, right across from me, only some of it visible from the window in the hatch. No. No, no, no. Suddenly, my door opened and I cried out in pain as I fell forward, my nose slamming into the metal grate. He was dead. My Nathaniel was dead. Shot and killed right in front of me and I hadn't been able to do a thing. Not a damn thing. The grief washed over me yet again, stronger this time and I cried into the metal. I ordered my body to move, ordered it to obey my wants. But I laid on that grate for some time as my limbs slowly started to warm up and twitch. After what felt like eternity, I got my arms and legs beneath me and agonizingly pushed myself up. I staggered to Nathaniel's now open chamber, my hands fluttering uselessly around his body. He was gone. Gone!

"No." I whispered. Suddenly, it was so much more real being this near, to touch his skin and feel just how cold it was. "No, no, no." I started screaming that word, over and over. I cried into his chest until I was dry heaving. I laid against him until I couldn't cry anymore, until the grief took a backseat to my rage. Those people, that man and woman, did this. They killed Nathaniel and taken Shaun. Shaun! My not even a year old baby!

"I'm going to get him back, baby." I whispered fiercely. "I'm going to get our baby back, Nathaniel, and I'm going to make those sons of bitches pay for this. For all of this."

The man's face popped into my head. I would track him to Hell and make sure he had a first class ticket to that show. The ring on Nathaniel's hand caught my attention—his wedding band. My hand laid against it. I hesitated only a moment before I pulled it off and stuffed it securely in my breast pocket—my only memento of him, of us. Everything else had been blown away by the—the bomb. That's right.

The whole reason we came here. Everything up topside was destroyed, laid to waste. My mind swam with questions, more questions than I knew what to do with. I didn't understand what was happening. Any of it. Where were the Vault employees? Who had been those people? How could they just—

I looked across from where I was and took a good long look at the decontamination chamber. Slowly, I got up and went to examine it. I'd never seen anything like it. Did decontamination chambers look like this? I noticed something blinking beside my chamber and went to investigate. Vitals? It was displaying everything a doctor would need to know to check up on and keep a patient healthy. What the hell? I'm pretty sure decontamination chambers didn't have those.

And then I remembered that there were others of us, others who would be just as confused when they stepped out. Or maybe they would understand better. I went to a chamber down from mine and looked at the vitals. Nothing. Maybe they had already left? I glanced at the door, then froze. No. No that couldn't be . . .

A skeleton. A skull was staring back at me. How . . . ? I backed up and hit the chamber across from that horrific scene. I whipped around and found yet another skeleton watching me. I lost it. I raced down the aisle, looking at each chamber and each one greeted me with more and more bones. I fell to my knees and winced—that was going to bruise, but honestly, I could barely feel it. I was in too much shock. My brain raced, piecing together what little I had uncovered. Nathaniel had felt and looked odd, for not even a day old corpse—then again, that may be because of the not-decontamination chamber. And I knew that the process for bodies to decompose into skeletons took well over six years. And that was in the case the body wasn't embalmed. What the hell was going on!

I had to think. Had to calm down. I repeated this to myself, but it did little to help. Eventually, I pushed it to the back of my head. None of this was important right now. None of it. What was important was finding those monsters and getting back my baby. I clutched the pocket with Nathaniel's wedding ring, the solidness of the metal calming my nerves a bit. Nathaniel would want me to find our baby first. I knew he would. Shaun was the world to him. To me too.

Those motherfuckers had no idea what they had done or who they had just made an enemy of. I was going to watch them all burn.

Cryogenics experiment! That's what we were to these people—test subjects to be put under and observed. Screw consent and ethics. I screamed as I grabbed the monitor and threw it across the room. I leaned forward onto the desk and pressed the palms of my hands into my eyes. I could see it. See the lives they had treated like nothing more than lab rats. And I had unwittingly signed my family up to the whole thing. Then again, these bastards had also saved my family when the bombs dropped. Their only saving grace. I forced myself back together. I had to find Shaun, and nowhere had I found evidence of the people who had taken him.

I sat in the Overseer chair and raked through my brain to remember _anything_ that might be helpful. For some reason, I remembered how they dressed. One wore a hazmat suit. The man with the scar wore a type of patchwork leather attire. It had been crudely stitched together, not all pieces the same color and it looked _worn_. Where in the world had his clothes come from?

I remembered the security cameras placed all over the compound as we had been lead to the decontam—the cryo chambers. I immediately regret breaking the computer—I could have hacked into their security system and gone over the feed to see what they could tell me about my prey. But it was too late for that now. Wondering what else I might find, I went through the Overseer drawers. I froze as I opened the bottom drawer. There was gun and box of ammo. A .10 mm if my memory served—Nathaniel loved his guns. Not all that surprising, considering he was a military man. I didn't think twice as I snatched that piece of metal and ammo up. Lucky that my vault suit had pouches around the hips. After reloading the clip, I shoved the rest of the bullets in a pouch and kept the gun in my hand. All I could think was that this gun was going to be a tool in my quest for vengeance.

As I got close to the entrance, my mind had come to a conclusion concerning intruders: they came from outside. I had no idea how. The bombs fell only recently—or, at least, I thought so. The whole cryogenic shit was throwing me and my time count off. Either way, I didn't understand how they were alive or why they weren't mutated or something—that's what radiation did, right? Mutate genetics among other things? My mind briefly flitted to those ridiculous VaultTec infomercials that would sometimes pop up on the TV about what it would be like when—never if—the bombs fell and what it would look like after. I kind of wish I had listened in more.

No matter how or why, they had come from the outside. And that's why I was now headed for the Vault entrance and more than a little terrified. I didn't know much about nuclear bombs or radiation—how long did it take for land saturated in radiation to, well, not be saturated? Would I die the moment I stepped outside? The man with the scar and company came from outside and seemed fine—but maybe they had adapted. Maybe they _were_ mutated but in a way I couldn't see. So many questions and what ifs, but my mind stilled when it thought about Shaun, my baby, outside in that radiated land. My throat constricted and my heart started beating rapidly. I had to get to him before something happened to him.

A scuttling noise made me freeze. What . . . had that been?

I knew for a fact that I was the only one alive in here . . . unless someone from outside had gotten in again? And based from my first impression, Outsiders weren't a friendly bunch. I clutched my gun and raised it, readying myself to fire with my eye trained down it's sight. Something else Nathaniel had taught me with his love of guns—he taught me how to shoot, too. when I turned the corner I looked everywhere, but the noise suddenly died out. Seeing nothing, but feeling like I wasn't alone, I stepped into the Vault entrance room and took another look. Without warning, the room was abuzz in the scuttling noise and I screamed as something tore into my ankle and pain lanced up my leg. I stumbled back and fell, looking all around the ground to figure out what had—

A scream got choked in my throat at what I saw. Bugs. Cockroaches, to be more specific, the size of dogs hissed at me. There were five of them. I flung my hand with the gun in front of me and popped off five rounds. The last one missed and the bug lunged at me. It screeched and tore at my arm. I screamed again in pain and popped off another round. Its guts went flying. I leaned back and gritted my teeth, pain washing over me. My leg and arm hurt like hell.

Where had they come from!? How the hell did they—outside. It was the only answer. Radiation wasn't inside the Vault. I shivered anew. If this is what happened to cockroaches . . . But I shoved that out of my mind. My only concern was Shaun and I would do and kill anything to find him. My eyes caught on a skeleton not too far from me. I gritted my teeth—I wouldn't rot away down here, in any case. I stuck my hand into my pockets and eventually my fingers brushed up against a slim, metal object—a Stimpak. I had stumbled over two at the medical bay. But I hesitated. Did I want to use a resource so precious so soon? For all I knew, these were the last Stimpaks in the world. I shook my head. I needed to conserve them for more egregious wounds.

My eyes caught on a skeleton further down the entryway. I put a hand on the wall to help me as I stood and gimped over to it. I sat down and tore off strips of cloth, bandaging my wounds—they were bleeding pretty badly. I reloaded my clip, wanting a cull cartridge the moment I stepped out. I had no idea what awaited me, but strangely, I wasn't afraid. There was a steeliness brewing inside me, a resolve that no matter what I faced, nothing would stand in my way between me and my baby. Nothing.


End file.
